Members of the community flock the UC Berkeley campus for the annual open house, to listen to the Cal State marching band, Saturday April 17, 2010, in Berkeley, Calif. Lots of events were held including a dinosaurs exhibit, live animal show and the many other events to encourage enrollment. less

Members of the community flock the UC Berkeley campus for the annual open house, to listen to the Cal State marching band, Saturday April 17, 2010, in Berkeley, Calif. Lots of events were held including a ... more

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

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John Ng a senior at UC Berkeley listens to the band at the open house, Saturday April 17, 2010, in Berkeley, Calif. Members of the community flock the UC Berkeley campus for the annual open house, which held events such as a dinosaurs exhibit, live animal show and the CAL state marching band. less

John Ng a senior at UC Berkeley listens to the band at the open house, Saturday April 17, 2010, in Berkeley, Calif. Members of the community flock the UC Berkeley campus for the annual open house, which held ... more

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

Image 3 of 4

Allyson and John Watts look over the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the dinosaur exhibit, Saturday April 17, 2010, in the Life Sciences Building on the campus in Berkeley, Calif. Members of the community flock the UC Berkeley campus for the annual open house. less

Allyson and John Watts look over the Tyrannosaurus Rex at the dinosaur exhibit, Saturday April 17, 2010, in the Life Sciences Building on the campus in Berkeley, Calif. Members of the community flock the UC ... more

Photo: Lacy Atkins, The Chronicle

Image 4 of 4

UC Berkeley open house draws thousands

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Kneeling on a chair in a UC Berkeley archaeology lab, Karan Singh was glued to a microscope.

"This one's a bone," he said, holding up a small shard of something that, frankly, looked like a rock. "And this is a fish scale."

Karan is 6 and although it was getting close to lunch time and he had already spent two hours on campus with his dad, mom and older brother, he was showing no signs of boredom. "My friends don't know any of this stuff," he said with a grin.

The Singh family drove four hours from Clovis on Saturday to attend Cal Day, UC Berkeley's annual open house. It seemed like just about every campus department held some kind of event - robot car races at one of the engineering buildings, sing-alongs in the music department, live insect analysis in front of the biology building.

The campus was flooded with thousands of students and their families, mostly high school students thinking about where they want to go to college. They were greeted by an enthusiastic, and highly diverse, crew of volunteers - frat boys and ROTC recruits, American Indian dance clubs and right-to-life groups.

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The only people noticeably missing were protesters. They held a small but very loud rally against UC budget cuts about three blocks off campus.

"All of the programs they have here, it's like you can do anything you want," said Carlos Perez, a freshman from June Jordan High in San Francisco, who was attending Cal Day with a group of kids from the Mayor's Youth Employment and Education Program. "I'm definitely going to apply here."

His friend Ben Kasemwatana, a junior at Phillip and Sala Burton High School, wasn't quite sold. He's hoping to go to UCLA instead. "I like the girls," he said of the Berkeley campus as he glanced around the packed Sproul Plaza. "What I don't like is there's nowhere to shop."

Adam Smith, a post-doctorate in climate change who was volunteering in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, said he got a kick out of showing off the stuffed birds and mammals and rare photos of extinct animals that he takes for granted sometimes. The museum is only open to the public once a year - on Cal Day - and there were items on display that even Smith had never seen before.

"My work can become very intellectual," Smith said. "Just to have people in here, it reminds me of when I was a kid, seeing these things for the first time."

The goal of Cal Day ultimately is to get young people interested not just in UC Berkeley, but in higher education and the UC system as a whole. Karan's dad, Kamal Singh, said it seemed to be working on both of his sons, which was why he'd driven them all the way from Clovis. His oldest boy, Rupinder, 9, wants to be an economic analyst, he said with a laugh.

Karan, of course, wants to be a scientist.

"I want to invent time machines and invent a car with a button that you can press and it will take you anywhere you want to go," Karan said in a rush. "I want to study dinosaurs - how they died, who was the first dinosaur born, who was the last dinosaur born. I want to study everything."